Breathe. The world is pulsing around you. Listen to the heartbeat of everything that is living. Take it in and be inspired. I believe when you begin to lose the ability to see the beauty in life, you are dying on the inside. I suppose that is a bold statement, but I’ve been over my head in the water of my own worries, insecurities and even grievances with the world and with myself. It took someone else to act as a mirror in my place to reflect back to me all the turmoil I was drowning in and the rot that had begun to gather upon my own soul. It was blurring my spirit and stomping on any joy that I could muster up. Death by a spirit is a strange thing, it happens so slowly and not only do you not remember it happening, you don’t even completely remember who you were before it started.
I’ve always believed that it was much easier to lose oneself than most made it out to be. You always see those movies in which a character addresses a friend who's gone through a major change and says, “Who are you? What have you become?” Usually, the character can’t answer because they don’t remember the past and don’t recognize the person standing in the mirror. Losing oneself is as easy as saying you like vanilla ice cream, when you hate it. Eventually, you repeat it so much that even when you want to tell the truth, you have already created a whole different identity and people like it so you don’t change. We take form under life’s hardships, some changes for the better and some for the worst. In my opinion, we are butterflies in constant transformation. Once we shed one cocoon we find ourselves in another, quickly after the fact, changing, adding and taking away.
The problem with spiritual death, I believe, is when every metamorphosis takes away, it subtracts, it hides the beauty of who we are, bit by bit. Our colors become less vibrant, our voices quieter and our vision blurrier. We haven’t had a sure thought in about three months. We’ve been walking down streets missing everything that’s going on around us or even maybe seeing everything and finding fault in it. It’s when we stop desiring things, it’s when we will settle for any crumb life throws us from it large dinner table but wouldn’t dare ask for a plate, mostly because we think we don’t deserve it. It’s like that feeling where you have been so shamed you can’t even lift your eyes to look at someone or maybe for some it’s like those days that sadness run so deep that the springs of your mattress push through the bedding and chain you down prisoner to your mind almost more than your heart.
The moment you feel dead inside, don’t let the feeling linger. Breathe. Feel life pulsing around you, because if you lose who you are in this moment you can never return to that same identity. You will never be able to be your old self again. Life doesn’t give redos. It’s the only button in play and if you’re not careful and if you’re not living then you’ll miss it. It will move right past you to the next scene, while you are still subtracting and taking away and dying, the world is living, full of life, and revival. Don’t cut off the canals to hope, don’t die inside. Instead, breathe it all in, take it all in and let no one or anything discourage you. There are worse things than physical death and one of those things is decomposing internally before you can even make it to the earthy grave six feet under.
